


Doing Christmas Right This Time

by SOMETHINREAL



Category: Day6 (Band)
Genre: Christmas, Flashbacks, M/M, Parties, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-20 19:52:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17028954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SOMETHINREAL/pseuds/SOMETHINREAL
Summary: Brian is not looking forward to Christmas this year. Maybe that’s a tad too strong. He’s not,notlooking forward to it. He’s just. Tired.(alternatively: the odds are always against brian, until they're not.)





	Doing Christmas Right This Time

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this to commemorate my one year ulting brian! it's based on christmas wrapping by the waitresses (a bop btw). as per usual: lots of sarcasm, a cameo of something old that i care about (in this case: david bowie) and a lack of editing because i'm lazy. past tense = flashback of sorts. more accurately: a memory. enjoy kiddos, it's been a while.

Brian is not looking forward to Christmas this year. Maybe that’s a tad too strong. He’s not, _not_ looking forward to it. He’s just. Tired. It’s been a long year, and he’s just glad for it to be over so he can start fresh (or at least come up with a set of resolutions that he will ultimately decide are pointless by the end of January) and forget everything that’s happened so far. It’s been mostly shitty. Not that anything specifically or significantly shitty has happened, it’s just been long, and tiresome and Brian seemed to have found himself going in circles for the whole year, with work, with friends, with that guy.

Jae Park. One year Brian’s senior, absolutely gorgeous, somehow always at the same place as Brian at the same time due to their mutual friends, but practically unreachable. Brian’s actually had his number saved forever, since two years ago, but since this year flew by so fast, he supposes so did the time to call.

It’s not like his life isn’t hectic, because it is, utterly and undoubtedly so. Maybe he wouldn’t be so stressed if it were a little less busy. His boss makes him work overtime, and he’s already doing two jobs to pay off his student loans and apartment, plus he still needs to feed himself, and his cats, and have hot water to shower in. It would probably help if he could sleep for a reasonable amount of time, but the office job at the pop culture news place he works for is 7:00-4:00  every Monday to Friday, and he works from 18:30-20:00 (on the days his boss is being reasonable, if not it’s six thirty to closing. At eleven thirty. And then another half hour to help cleaning up the store. Which is _tough_ , in light terms) at a liquor store every other weekday and most Saturdays make it difficult to do anything. He gets four, maybe five hours of sleep on a good night. Brian really only gets Sundays off, and like, half of Saturdays, and provincial holidays. It’s shitty, but he needs the money so he can’t complain.

With Christmas means lots of festive news articles that he’s got to write about bullshit that he doesn’t care about, and also that people come and go in a flurry to buy their drinks for their parties and friends. So all Brian’s really set up around his house is a miniature tree (apartments have no storage, and he uses the storage space they do give him for the extra furniture and mattress, so he just doesn’t have any space for a properly-sized tree), and some fairy lights on his desk and around his apartment that he has up the whole year for the aesthetic, but turns on the red and green setting so it looks like he has his life together.

He supposes it’s better that he doesn’t have that may decorations because his cats have proven to him that he can’t have anything nice in the house. Delilah chewed through his tinsel and Apollo knocked the whole fucking tree off it’s little stand in the corner, while Gatsby just sat and watched from afar with Phil (who Brian had later found out was actually Philomena, but the name stuck), always the tame ones.

Yes, Brian has four cats, yes he knows it’s too many, and yes, they all hate him. Most of the time.

He realizes after he’s been staring at his laptop for the past twenty minutes that staring at his laptop for the past twenty minutes is pointless because he’s clearly not going to write anything good. And in those twenty minutes he’s written nothing but the headline and his name, alongside the gibberish that came when Apollo decided to walk across the keyboard, but he has also realized that he’s _this_ close to pulling his hair out, so he calls it a night. Apollo flicks his tail when he sits down on the edge of the desk, which makes Brian’s tea cup wobble, which in turn makes it spill a little bit and make the ink bleed on his paper. The paper Brian’s notes for the article are on. Brian is too tired to care that much. Apollo just sits and looks at him like he hasn’t committed a crime.

Yeah, Brian is going to spend Christmas by himself this year. His cats are invited only if they stop acting like such dicks, which is probably impossible, but either way Brian is alone. How did he get here?

 

-

 

The first time Brian met Jae, they didn’t really hit it off. In Brian’s defence, it was hard to. They were at one of Wonpil’s annual Christmas parties separately, and Wonpil, well, he took that stuff very seriously. Brian found (and still finds) it hard to believe that Wonpil knows so many people. His and Sungjin’s house is big, but it’s not _that_ big, yet he still manages to fit over 100 people in it yearly.

Brian’s never really enjoyed crowds, or parties, especially parties with big crowds, especially Christmas parties with big crowds, where he’d have to interact with people he didn’t care about. He only ever went because Wonpil had been his best friend since high school, where he’d practically taught Wonpil English, and always helped him out, and Wonpil was always there for him too, so he supposed it would be nice of him to go. Besides, Wonpil always made the best Christmas snacks.

He was introduced to Jae through Wonpil himself, in Wonpil’s kitchen, a surprisingly empty part of the house.

“This is Jae,” he’d said over a Frank Sinatra Christmas carol. The guy, Jae, was tall and pretty and was wearing an ugly Christmas sweater. Brian wasn’t sure whether it was ironic or not. Jae reached out for a handshake. It was much too formal for something so casual, but Brian couldn’t just stand there, so he took Jae’s hand and gave it a firm shake and flashed a tight smile. Jae’s hand was rough and calloused, but dainty.

“Hey,” Brian said, and introduced himself.

Someone called for Wonpil. Brian didn’t know them, but they’d just walked through the door and were holding a box of chocolates for him. Wonpil smiled apologetically. “Hostess duty calls.” Brian wanted to point out and make a joke about how he just called himself a hostess, but Wonpil was gone before he could get the words out.

“So,” Jae said. His voice was hard to hear over the chatter, but Brian managed. “How do you know Pil?”

“Went to high school together. I taught him English and made sure he actually went for Sungjin after pining since he was fourteen. You?”

“Work colleagues.” Wonpil works at an arts school not quite downtown but not quite in the suburbs. It’s the kind of pretentious arts school that Brian always hated to love the idea of going to.

Brian nodded. “Cool. What do you teach?”

“Fine arts, but the put me in for the other music teacher when she’s away since I’m the only teacher in the area who has a good enough background in music to teach the class. See, the school, for being the pretentious piece of shit school it is, is too cheap to hire a sub, so they get another teach with a blank to cover my class, while I cover another class, which is counter productive. It just gives my students a free period, which I know they take advantage of. Anyways. What do you do?”

“Oh, I work at a pop news company. Think Buzzfeed but lower budget and better treating of their workers.” He opened his mouth to continue, but someone called for him. He glanced to the direction of the voice, his eyes falling upon a small girl. “Hey, babe,” Brian said through a grin. Ayeon smiled back easily, making her way over. “I didn’t know you were going to be here. I was just talking to one of Wonpil’s friends. This is Jae.” But when he turned, Jae was nowhere to be seen.

 

-

 

There’s a week until Christmas and it makes Brian feel gross all over. He doesn’t mean to not like Christmas, it’s just all so ridiculous. He hates having to write about nice things that people do out of the “Christmas Spirit.” It’s ridiculous. It’s _stupid_. He doesn’t understand why as soon as someone does something nice for somebody else during the month of December that it’s instantly because they’re in the Christmas spirit. Besides, tons of people don’t even celebrate Christmas, and even more people don’t celebrate it for what it’s for.

He hasn’t gone out to buy Wonpil’s present yet, but he’s opted out of going to the annual party, and decided that he’s going to have to go through with some kind of IOU for Wonpil, because he’s kind of broke right now and he knows that the synthesizer Wonpil wants will go on sale for Boxing Day. He also hasn’t bought the things he needs for his Christmas alone (which sounds sad, so he decided that he was going to make himself a Christmas dinner and open up the gift his mom sent him from Korea, but then he realized that, that was probably even sadder. But whatever. Brian Kang is nothing if not a depressing piece of shit), so he needs to go out to a grocery store and grab a turkey and some potatoes and the stuff he needs to make mulled wine, because it’s probably one of the only things he can enjoy about the season.

He’s sure the grocery stores probably won’t even have any turkeys left, but he doesn’t have any freezer space, and leftover meat is never as nice as it is freshly cooked. Whatever. If he can’t find one, he’ll just buy one of those pre-cooked, pre-seasoned whole chickens and pretend that he’s got his shit together.

 

-

 

Brian didn’t ski. Wonpil knew this well, but for some fucking reason, he invited Brian out to the ski lodge that he rented out for a week (which was something he had only started doing this year. Brian didn’t know how he had the money for it, but he had an inkling suspicion that it had something to do with Sungjin’s CFO label). He really took this whole Holiday Spirit thing seriously, and if it weren’t for the excuse of getting to see someone that Brian had been meaning to talk to, he would have declined for the sake of his sanity, and for the not having to deal with his second job’s boss reprimand for taking a week of paid vacation (even though he gets four throughout the year).

Brian didn’t ski because he didn’t like the sport (though he doesn’t, really), but because he was accident prone and barreling down a mountain side covered in ice and snow with nothing but two metal sticks to stop him from dying just seemed like a bad idea for him. There weren’t that many people there, only Wonpil and Sungjin, alongside Dowoon, Jackson, Mark, Hyerim, and Jae. Brian wasn’t sure how he felt about Jae. After the whole leaving him for no reason at Wonpil’s party made Brian a little skeptical about the whole ordeal, but he was sure Jae meant well.

They had to take a ski lift up to the house, which seemed horrible anyways, but proved even more awful when Jackson took it upon himself to shake the whole lift and in turn earn himself a good handful of punches and reprimands because of his idiocy. The house was big enough, looking like the one from the _Last Christmas_ music video that Brian was not ashamed of favouring over any other Christmas song.

He mustn’t have been paying attention to what was happening, because apparently they were dropping their bags and skiing right then.

“Everyone _does_ know how to ski, right?” Wonpil asked jokingly, and Brian didn’t want to admit that, no, he didn’t really, and no amount of instructional videos he found on YouTube could possibly aid him in not dying a miserable death that would somehow either involve being impaled by a ski pole or flying off the edge of the mountain after not being able to stop himself, like that one scene from _Better Off Dead._ (Except he won’t be on a bike and he won’t be screaming for his two dollars).

A general murmur of yes ran through the group, and Brian noticed that Jae is looking at him. Or, was. He looked away as soon as Brian looked back. He seemed almost better-looking than he did a mere few weeks ago, but Brian thought that it may have been because he was in normal clothes and not the horrid sweater.

Wonpil came to him when everyone else went to get their gear and he just stood there awkwardly in his parka.

“Will you be okay?” he asked.

Brian shrugged. “I’ll be fine. I’m not _that_ bad.” Except for the fact that he was _that_ bad.

“They have a hill smaller than the one we’re going on if you want. It’s clearer--”

“Wonpil,” Brian huffed, his shoulders slumping. “I’m not going on the bunny hill. I’ll be fine. I’m not a child. If anything, _you’re_ the child.” Wonpil stuck his tongue out, but otherwise left to get his stuff on. Brian followed him.

The hill looked steeper looking down than it did when he was coming up in the lift. Brian would be a liar if he said that he wasn’t at least mortified. One by one, each of his friends bEgan their descend, leaving him last. (Besides Jae, but he was nowhere to be found). He could do this, besides, how hard could it be?

He realized how hard it could be when he pushed off the edge and began to go down, his speed picking up all at once as opposed to gradually, and he tried to slow down, he swore he tried to do what he’d learned but somehow his skis crossed too much and he ended up ass over teapot, tumbling down the hill.

Fucking typical.

As if the embarrassment of wiping out wasn’t enough, he also got his ski stuck in a tree, twisting his ankle all the way around. It hurt like a fucking bitch.

“Brian!” Someone called as he tried to pull it out, but just twisted it more, causing him wince. He looked over his shoulder, and it was Jae-- where did he come from? He skidded to a stop gracefully beside Brian (of fucking _course_ he did), and bent down so they were somewhat level. “Dude, are you alright?”

Brian winced again. “Been better.”

“I saw you fall,” Jae said. Brian blushed, but hoped Jae thought it was from the cold. “I, uh, don’t know why I asked. You’re clearly not.”

For a moment they were just staring.

“Do you--”

“Can you--”

Jae cleared his throat. Brian glanced away. Why were things so awkward between them?

“Can I help you? Your ankle looks pretty fucked.”

Somehow, Jae helped him out of the tree and also hobble (or, more like Jae dragging Brian up the hill) to the house, where he got Brian to sit on the bathroom counter while he grabbed something from his bag. When he returned, he had a tensor bandage in his hand. Their eyes met, and Jae silently asked if he could look at Brian’s ankle, to which Brian nodded. He was careful in slipping off Brian’s boot, in a generous attempt not to hurt him any further.

He inspected it for a few minutes before coming to a conclusion.

“It looks sprained, maybe just twisted, but nothing too serious. We should ice it first, but I can wrap it for you.”

“Yeah, sure. How come you keep a tensor bandage with you? What are you, a bootleg medic?”

Jae shrugged. “I sprain easily.”

It quiet for a few minutes where Jae was just staring at Brian’s ankle and Brian was staring at the top of Jae’s head.

“I’m sorry I bailed the other week at Pil’s party. I just don’t do well around couples and I didn’t want to--”

“Wait, what couples?” Brian asked incredulously, narrowing his eyes. Jae couldn’t be talking about him. He’s been single all his life, pretty much.

“That girl,” Jae said. “Your girlfriend?”

“Ayeon?” Brian asked. Jae nodded. Brian held in a laugh. “Dude, she’s not my girlfriend.”

“She’s not?” This time, Brian did laugh.

“ _Dude_ , no, never.”

“I thought-- but you called her babe?”

Brian grins at him. “I’m gay. I call every girl babe.” It seemed to sink in for Jae then. He nodded slowly, in understanding. Then, Jae laughed too.

“Wow. Okay, well I’m stupid.”

Brian shrugged, smiling sheepishly. “Maybe a little. That’s okay. I get it a lot.” Another beat of silence, then: “Do you have one?”

“One what?” Jae asked.

“A girlfriend.”

“Nope.” Jae shook his head.

“You’re good looking. It’s hard to believe that no one’s snatched you up.”

“Well, I hope no girls try to snatch me up. I’m gay too.” Brian nodded slowly, a feeling he couldn’t put his finger on bubbling in his chest.

“Okay.”

“Look,” Jae said. “Um, I’ll get ice and stuff and fix you up, but I’ll give you my number. You know. In case you need me to doctor you again.”

Brian smiled and nodded his head again. It was a lousy excuse, but what was Brian going to do, say no?

 

-

 

The turkey he finds is conveniently small, more akin to a chicken after all, even though the package insisted it was turkey, but he figures it’s better for him anyways. It’s already in the oven cooking, and gets halfway through making mulled wine before he realizes what he forgot.

“Fuck,” he curses. Brian is nothing if not an idiot.

Fucking cranberries.

 

-

 

They tried to meet up throughout the year, but things just kept getting in the way. Jae’s usually busy, and the days that he’s not, Brian’s working, and whenever they planned something, something else got in the way of it. Like the time they were to go out to the movies, but Jae had gotten a call from his mother who needed him urgently, or that time that they were supposed to go swimming at Jae’s the day after Brian had gotten third degree sunburn. The odds seemed to be oddly against them.

Wonpil takes Halloween just as seriously as Christmas, so he threw a Halloween party every year too. This time, Jae said that he would meet Brian there so he could make it less painful, and for once every seemed to be right for them.

Brian was dressed as Ziggy Stardust; one, because he would die for David Bowie, and two, because he had a mishap with his hair and needed to do something with the gross orange that his hairdresser had somehow talked him into doing for the season. Besides, he’d found a replica on one of Bowie’s iconic outfits for cheap on ebay and he’d be damned if he wasn’t going to wear it.

He was sat on the couch eating some of the mummy cookies that someone (probably not Wonpil, because he was a better cook than baker) had made, bopping his head along halfheartedly to Rockwell’s _Somebody’s Watching Me._ He hated to admit it, but Jae was probably the only reason he had come. It wasn’t like he knew anyone here anyways, which was why he was sat on the couch next to a pair of folks who clearly hadn’t seen each other in a while, as they we’re having a very exaggerated conversation of how things were going in their lives since they’d last seen each other.

To be honest, Brian hadn’t seen Wonpil for the whole night (though he was in costume, he shouldn’t have been that hard to pinpoint), and he was getting jittery. It was only a matter of time before Brian’s phone began to vibrate against his thigh. He raised from the couch to find a more quiet space to take the call.

“Hey,” he said once he was in the bathroom. It was Jae.

“Hey,” Jae said, but he didn’t sound very happy.

“What’s up?”

“Bad news,” Jae told him. Brian couldn’t help the way his shoulders fell. This always happened. Brian liked Jae, and he knew that it was neither of their faults that things always got in the way, but Brian _wanted_ to see Jae, and at this point, he should have just expected things not to work. The world seemed to be always against him. “My car won’t go.”

“Oh,” Brian said. “That’s okay.”

“I’m so sorry.”

He shrugged, then realized that Jae couldn’t see it. “It’s not your fault.”

“This always happens through.”

“Jae. It’s fine. We’ll see each other soon.”

But they wouldn’t, and both of them knew it.

 

-

 

He’s lucky that he lives a few blocks away from a grocery store that’s open every day of the year, because right now it’s 7:36 on Christmas day and he’s going out in his stupid parka and boots because he forgot the cranberries for his mulled wine, but also because he’s a freak who likes to eat cranberries by themselves.

He’s now sure how he can manage to be so forgetful, but with the long year coming to an end, he figures he might as well go out with a bang, forgetting things, making them worse, just to say that he won’t when the next year rolls around. Next year. It’s hard to think that another year will start in less than a week. He’s not quite sure what to do with himself.

The store seems eerie without people in it; he’s sure that he’s the only one besides the clerk at the from who looks like he would rather die than stand at his till anymore. The fluorescent lights feel strange against Brian’s skin, too bright, reflecting against the stark linoleum floors and into his eyes. He hates grocery stores. They give him a sick feeling.

Brian finds the cranberries with minimal difficulty, and makes a beeline for the cashiers, wanting to get out of the store as quickly as possible.

The cashier can’t find the number for the cranberries, so he has to look through the little scroll above his till in order to ring them up, which is _fine_ , because Brian is really in no rush, but he just wants to be at his apartment eating a whole turkey and drinking mulled wine. His eyes dart around to find something to occupy himself with, when what to his wandering eyes should appear, it’s _Jae_ , looking disheveled while he sorts through the magazine rack.

“Jae,” Brian says.

“Brian.” Jae grins at him, walking to and standing next to him in line. “What’re the odds?”

Brian smiles back at him. “Merry Christmas.”

“You too.”

“Why are you alone?” Brian knew that some people would be spending Christmas alone, but he never would have expected it from Jae. It seems so strange to run into him here, after not having seen him for most of this year, always being so busy, always running into each other unexpected. It’s nice. Jae’s recently bleached his hair blond, but it doesn’t look fried, it looks soft, well done. Brian’s returned to black, having to keep up with dye jobs being too much work.

Jae shakes his head. “I could ask you the same thing. I’m spending Christmas by myself this year. I need a break. The year’s been so crazy, I just wanted to have a day to veg out.”

“Me too,” Brian told him honestly. “It _has_ been crazy, but why are you--” Brian glances down to Jae’s hands and sees what he’s holding. “You mean, _you_ forgot cranberries too?”

Fucking cranberries. Go figure.

Jae looks to the conveyor belt, where Brian’s cranberries sit. Then he laughs. Brian laughs too.

They laugh so much that the cashier must think they’re batshit. But they’re finally catching on to what’s happening.

“Hey,” Brian says. “I’ve got the worlds smallest turkey back at my place, but I think it could work for two. I also have mulled wine that I'm almost finished making it just needs, you know.” Brian gestures to where the cashier has finally rung up his fruit. "Cranberries."

Jae grins. “Count me in.”

For once, the odds are in his favour, and besides, maybe Brian didn’t want to spend Christmas alone after all.

 


End file.
